HOW LACK OF EVIDENCE IN POLICE WORK LEADS TO VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN SERBIA

Abstract

After the Second World War, the police in the Republic of Serbia introduced the model of the practice of „criminal investigation“ which was used in the former Soviet Union. This model of policing practice was focused on finding enemies among the citizens and informing the public that the enemies had been discovered. Evidence was considered irrelevant in this model of policing practice. By applying this model of police work, human rights have been permanently violated and citizens have been subjected to various types of torture. The results of the research in this paper showed that many reported citizens have never been convicted of indicted crimes. Also, the results of the research showed that this model of police work out many reported citizens, accused a small part of citizens, while a very small number were convicted. By filing criminal charges against citizens who have never been convicted, the police violated basic human rights international legal instruments. One of such rights was the right to justice in criminal proceedings, which should be based not only on legal but also on ethical and moral principles on which modern society develops. This right belongs to the group of basic human rights and it has been permanently violated in the application of the „criminal investigation“ model from the end of the Second World War to the beginning of the second decade of the 21^st century. The result of this model of policing was the mass torture of citizens, their imprisonment, arrests, accusations, and investigations without any evidence against them, with many open criminal files that marked a large number of citizens and their families for life.